Tuesday, 28 January 2014

A special look at - the alliance (part two) & the horde (part three)

Once
again welcome to Ramses Reviews. I finally decided to finish my look
at the factions. The original intent was for this to be two separate
posts, one for each faction. However, the more I wrote, the more it
became clear how much the problems of the two factions were
intertwined.

The
Empire of Stormwind

But
first, a story of personal taste. I've said before that, of the two
factions, my favorite is the horde. However, I was recently also
asked my favorite race. It was actually a rather tough question for
me, since I like almost every race in the game. In the end, it was
actually humanity that won out, because I really dig the seven
kingdoms.

Okay,
bit weird to have your favorite race not in your favorite faction,
but perfectly possible. Either you really dislike the other alliance
races, or have all the horde races in really high regard. Then I
thought what my second favorite race was; the night elves. Third; the
dwarves. Fourth; the draenei. And yet, the alliance still isn't my
favorite faction. The hell is the deal with that?

Well,
I kinda touched upon it in my first look at the alliance, but I don't
think I gave it enough emphasis. The idea behind the alliance is that
they're separate nations, banding together to stand against outsiders
who could overwhelm the individual nations. Their leadership and
militaries coordinate together, with a very open sharing of
information. In the highest level of government, this means
coordination and trust between kings and generals. On the lower
levels, it means that the nations of the alliance share information
that could strengthen each others' armies.

At
least, that was the intent when the alliance was formed back in
warcraft II (though you can argue it goes back all the way to the
conjurers in warcraft I). Nations remain separate entities, even as
they strengthen and defend each other. It's a noble affair, though it
brings with it the inherent problems of trust, either with
ineffectiveness coming from nations not trusting each other (Gilneas
pretty much being an in-name-only member of the alliance) or their
trust being betrayed (Alterac selling out the alliance in the hopes
the horde will spare them).

So,
we can basically boil the alliance down to two things: “Independent
nations” and “united against common enemies”. The former is why
I'm a lot less hard on the night elves joining the alliance than the
forsaken joining the horde. Sure, they're equally different from the
factions they're joining, but with the alliance, a big part of the
appeal is to see very diverse nations stand side-by-side.

However,
the problem lies with the second one. There is no common enemy that
the alliance is forming a united front against. Each of the various
nations is busy fighting unrelated stuff. Stormwind is dealing with
the defias rebellion, the dark horde, the black dragonflight and
itself. The night elves are busy with the corruption overtaking their
lands and the dark forces that would ally with it. The dwarves and
the gnomes are the only ones who have common enemies, dealing with
the troggs that were freed with the opening of Uldaman and the Dark
Iron Dwarves.

And
well, there you basically have the problem. The alliance is defined
by nations uniting against common enemies. They are not doing so. For
the entirety of Vanilla, the alliance did not exist. They were just
some relatively friendly nations. Okay, that's a slight hyperbole.
There is actually a single location where the alliance did exist, and
I mentioned it in part 1 as well. I just don't think I did justice to
the sheer insanity of the idea that the alliance only acted as an
alliance in this one single place: Alterac Valley.

Think
about that. The dwarven lands being infested by underground
monstrosities, with the entire gnomish capital being lost and their
population nearly driven to extinction? No action. The night elf
lands being corrupted from the inside-out and tainted monstrosities
taking over most of it? No action. The entire human kingdom of
Stormwind falling apart as orcs overrun the east, bandits overrun the
west and start on the center, and the south is abandoned to hordes of
undead? No action. A territorial misunderstanding in a remote,
strategically-uninteresting corner of the world? Full support!
Humans, dwarves and night elves must stand together to help these
archaeologist invade and wipe out the frostwolf clan, for surely
there is no greater threat than reclusive primitives that
misunderstood the intention of explorers. Surely, there is no cause
greater than exterminating an entire clan in the name of dwarven
imperialism? Not even the alliance can do this alone, for the
cenarion circle must also forsake its neutrality and send an
arch-druid. Truly, there is no greater threat to the natural world,
no greater aberration to the natural order than... SHAMANISM! Because
lord knows that the horde doesn't use shamanism anywhere else.

To
be fair, it's not like the other battlegrounds made any sense either.
Warsong Gulch requires Thrall to be acting completely out of
character and everyone to overlook every single other source of wood
ever. Arathi Basin has the forsaken invading Stromgarde territory
because they need the resources there, despite the fact that it's at
the other side of the continent from where they operate. I'm entirely
willing to entertain the idea that the original vanilla battlegrounds
were just the developers trolling the lore fans. I actually kinda
prefer it over the idea that they were genuinely trying.

Anyway,
back to the point I was originally making; After warcraft III,
blizzard had no real solid plan what to go for with the direction of
the factions, and both are kinda left meandering for both vanilla and
TBC. As much as I hate to say it, Wrath of the Lich King really was
the first expansion to legitimately give the alliance a well-defined
role again, even if that role was a terrible, terrible idea.

You
can argue that TBC was a little better than vanilla. It did indeed
add one more quest hub, Honor Hold, where there was a sense that the
nations of the alliance were actually, you know, allied. Still, it
was too little, too late, with the rest of the continent again being
all about the various nations doing their own unrelated stuff before
being forgotten in favor of the naaru.

I
honestly don't get why the writers seem to have so much trouble with
writing the alliance. I realize I'm only talking as a backseat driver
here, but it really seems like it wouldn't be so hard. Pick a main
enemy, pick a few randomly selected alliance armies (remember,
nations can have more than one army. It's a good opportunity to
establish some variety within a single nation), have representatives
from these armies stand in a single room to plan strategies, give the
armies bases in zones that seem the most thematically appropriate
(don't be afraid to have two different armies near each other, or
even building their bases side-by-side), have them assault nearby
bases of the main enemy and have multiple armies working together
whenever appropriate. Frankly, it's not exactly a complicated
formula. And yet, it never seems to occur. Instead, the alliance
either acts like a bunch of non-allied, but friendly nations, or like
the stormwindian empire of stormwind, serving stormwind for the glory
of stormwind.

And
yeah, the alliance in Wrath of the Lich King becomes the latter. Both
in- and out-of-universe, it's rather disturbing. Apparently, the idea
behind the radical shift in direction was that they were planning to
introduce some sort of Thrall-like figure for the alliance in the
form of Varian. And completely missed the mark. That's something that
actually happens surprisingly often with Thrall. The basic idea is
understandable. The horde had a focal figure in the form of Thrall,
who was able to speak for the entirety of the horde. So they wanted a
focal figure for the alliance, who could do the same.

Thing
is, they kinda got things in reverse. Thrall can't speak for the
horde because he is its leader. Just because you have formal
leadership of a faction doesn't mean you can accurately represent all
of it. Thrall is a leader, because he has learned to speak for the
horde. Thrall is very much a diplomatic character, and is always
portrayed as having a large circle of friends and advisors. Thrall
can speak for the tauren, because Thrall has spent enough time with
Cairne and Muln to actually know what the tauren would want. Thrall
can speak for the darkspear, because Vol'jin is one of his closest
friends and he knows what he'd want. Thrall can speak for the orcs,
because he keeps enough of an eye and ear on his people to know what
they actually want. You'll notice that you never see Thrall speak for
the blood elves or forsaken, because, get this, he's not close enough
to them to speak for them.

Varian
is written in the exact opposite way. He doesn't need advisors or
input from other nations to lead the alliance, because, as leader of
the alliance, he naturally knows best how to lead it. Whenever Varian
has a problem with leadership, it can only be because of outside
influence by dark forces. Without leadership from the Wrynn
bloodline, all the lands under his domain fall into chaos. Only if
the Wrynn were allowed to lead again could those lands be restored.
Even the divine forces of the universe make it clear that Varian, or
others of his bloodline, should be in charge.

Now
let's talk on real life writing and philosophy from the late middle
ages. Back then, it was a common claim that royal families had been
selected by God himself to serve as leaders of men. Because of being
blessed by God, they were naturally better rulers and it was only
right that they lorded over the lower classes, who didn't possess the
natural ability to lead. Without the leadership of the king, the land
would fall apart into barbarism and anarchy.

Anyone
else seeing a weird parallel here?

Yeah,
Varian is basically a straight import from the late medieval era,
though I doubt it was deliberate on part of the writers. I'm guessing
they were trying to use some of the 'true king' tropes popular in
fantasy, and used them with such a lack of irony and thought that it
just happened to resemble six hundred year old propaganda. It's
absolutely amazing how the writers somehow skipped centuries upon
centuries of developments in society, morality, philosophy and
literature. I'd be impressed if it wasn't for the fact I meant I had
to deal with stormwindian empire of stormwind overtaking my favorite
races.

Actually,
that's being a little unfair. Despite appearances, the empire has
surprisingly little to do with stormwind. Sure, they're led by
Stormwind's king, carry the stormwind flag, see stormwind as their
capital and use Stormwind architecture. However, there is a bit more
to the nation of Stormwind than that. I actually feel a bit sorry for
how I talked about Stormwind in previous reviews. Oh, it's still the
most boring faction in the game by a long shot. But that's only when
you look at the kingdom as a whole.

You
see, Stormwind does have a surprising number of interesting
sub-factions. I'm personally quite fond of the people's militia, a
group of westfall farmers who've been abandoned by the kingdom in
their struggle against the defias, and who've formed their own
military. In addition to the militia, you've also got the Night
Watch, which struggles against the horrors of Duskwood, the stormwind
marshals, lawkeepers who have to keep the kingdom safe from outside
threats now that the army is abroad, and SI:7, the rather shady
Stormwind Intelligence agency. Even the stormwind gryphon masters
seem to be their own organization, with special uniforms and their
own flag, though I don't think we ever got any elaboration on them.

The
thing is though, none of these factions show up again. Oh sure,
sometimes it looks like they get focus again, like when the people's
militia turned up as the westfall brigade in Northrend, or when SI:7
formed the alliance vanguard in Pandaria. But really, it's only the
names that re-appear, not what made those factions interesting. The
Westfall Brigade is no different from any other generic alliance
force in Northrend, and SI:7 is now a multi-national generic rogue
organization, rather king-loyal internal security for Stormwind.

So,
obviously, we're gonna need to differentiate. The generic
Stormwind-themed alliance forces as commanded by Varian Wrynn shall
now be known as the Wrynn Empire. It's a term I'm going to need for
the next segment.

Alliance
Races

One
thing most fans of Warcraft can agree on is that the alliance really
hasn't had a good record with the newly added races. The night elves
have been turned into pale imitations of the glory that made them so
popular. The draenei were essentially forgotten after their
expansion, and even there, most of the focus was on non-alliance
draenei. The worgen are the worst off, as they might as well not
exist after their starting zone and Silverpine. Many fans will tell
you this is because blizzard is trying to fit a square peg in a round
hole with these races. That they (especially night elves and worgen)
are just not good matches for the alliance.

Honestly,
I have to disagree. In my opinion, the night elves, the draenei and
the worgen were all perfect
new races for the alliance. Sure, they don't really fit the artistic
style, culture or armies of the other alliance races. But that should
be a good thing. I want to see siege tanks and ancient protectors
march into battle side-by-side. I want to see warriors clad in
crystalline armor hold the line as savage berserker packs charge in
from behind them. That's the entire point of the alliance being an
alliance; nations that are different in style banding together for a
common cause.

And
that's why I think the three races are such good fits for the
alliance. Sure, night elf society is pretty much the exact opposite
of dwarven society. But nobody is asking them to mingle, just work
together. The nations having vastly differing histories and looks is
what makes them capable of standing as an independent force within
the coalition known as the alliance. There is a good reason that
World of Warcraft gave the dwarves and gnomes much more distinction.

However,
while these races fit perfectly into the alliance, capable of
standing alongside Stormwind, Ironforge and Gnomeregan as equals,
they don't fit at all into the Wrynn Empire. Hell, neither do
aforementioned Stormwind, Ironforge and Gnomeregan. See, there's the
big difference between the alliance and the wrynn empire.

In
the alliance, all nations are powerful, independent entities, working
together only at the highest levels. This originates all the way back
in Warcraft II. The horde was a mass of clans that followed a roughly
similar culture. Sure, one clan would chew bones, and one would ride
dragons, but the overall framework for the various orcish clans was
the same. Even the non-orcish members of the horde were absorbed into
these clans.

The
alliance however, consisted of independent kingdoms. There was no
overall authority, not even really any indication of an overlapping
culture. Even the church of the holy light, the closest thing to a
thread connecting the seven kingdoms, was treated more like an
independent power than a thing to bond over. The contrast is the
starkest when looking at the non-human members of the alliance, which
maintained their own kingdoms and vastly different cultures.
Basically, it's like the immigration debate. Horde is integration,
alliance is multi-cultural.

Warcraft
III continued this trend. The different factions in the alliance all
got different building styles and a lot of the time, you faced only
one or two kingdoms at once. Contrast this again with the horde,
which had jungle trolls, wyverns and tauren forming a single
traveling army under leadership of Thrall in RoC, and form another
single unified army along with ogres in TFT.

However,
the alliance is not the same as the Wrynn Empire. In the Wrynn
empire, there is absolutely no room for races with their own history
and culture, because it means that they have different views of the
world. An ancient race that stands as guardians of nature? Theocratic
planet-hoppers who have been driven to near-extinction time and time
again? Cursed Man-wolves? These are not going to hold the same views
as your average medieval warrior-king. To have them in the same
alliance means that Varian Wrynn is going to have to communicate,
negotiate, and occasionally even compromise.

Obviously,
we can't have that. It would mean that the alliance was actually
about an alliance, rather than Lord Wrynn's personal empire. So, we
got increasingly weak excuses to keep these races subservient. Elune
revealed that it was her divine will that the night elves follow
Varian, offering no real reason. Goldrinn also made Varian his
champion, despite him never doing anything that would make him appeal
to Goldrinn. Velen suddenly had visions that Anduin Wrynn would be
the one leading the army of light, so his support was for the Wrynn
family. And the worgen just kinda dissipated into the human and night
elf populaces, because they had no religious leader that could
suddenly have a vision proclaiming the Wrynns to the best thing ever.

All
the hordes

It's
been my observation that blizzard really didn't want to move the
franchise forward anymore after The Frozen Throne. What they wanted
to do was revisit the glories of previous events, and explore
completely new peoples and environments. They actually do the latter
really well, giving us a lot of interesting new societies. The
centaur, the qiraji, the ethereals, the arakkoa, the magnataur, the
stone lords, the jinyu and the pandaren are all great additions to
the warcraft universe (okay, some were already there in warcraft III,
but they didn't really get history and society until they appeared in
WoW).

However,
it's the former that's causing problems. Now I love warcraft's past
stories. Warcraft II gave us epic global warfare, ToD finally showed
us the world that's been talked about since the first game, Warcraft
III gave us powerful personal stories and TFT explored the darker
sides of the universe. But here's the key aspect: World of Warcraft
isn't any of those games. It doesn't take place during any of those
games. Even if it wanted, it couldn't replicate what made those games
good, because it has vastly different gameplay. And there's nothing
wrong with that. World of Warcraft isn't any of those games. It takes
place in the future, in a time where the outcomes of all those
beloved events can be seen and explored.

But
no. Instead, all future developments are turned into weak attempts to
imitate the past, or are ignored entirely. We've already seen it with
the alliance as a whole. Barely acknowledge to exist until Wrath of
the Lich King, where the entire faction was now defined by an attempt
to combine Anduin Lothar and Thrall in a single character.

Unlike
the alliance, the horde got assigned identity from the past right
from the start of WoW. However, the problem was that they couldn't
just pick a single identity. Instead, the horde has been stuck
between four different directions, all of which are throwbacks to
earlier games.

1)
The Monster Horde (Warcraft I). This horde is a dark force of
monstrosities, alien and chaotic. The Monster Horde relies little on
technology or tactics, instead preferring to rely on pure, dumb
strength. This is subverted only by a rare few individuals. It is
through these rare individuals, whether they be warlocks, warlords or
infiltrators, that the dumb hordes become a true threat to the
planet.

This
is the only version of the horde under which the inclusion of the
forsaken makes sense, and it shows up in a few quests in Cataclysm as
well, like the battle for Northwatch and large parts of the Twilight
Highlands.

2)
The War Machine Horde (Warcraft II: ToD). Like the Monster Horde, the
War Machine Horde is a dark force that will overwhelm the planet.
Unlike the Monster Horde, it will do this not through mindless
violence, but through large-scale industrialization. For this version
of the horde, everything is a resource to be consumed. Massive
industries consume wood, metal and oil at an unprecedented rate,
spewing forth weaponry, fleets and siege machines. Dark magic is fed
into young children, turning defenseless infants into fully capable
warriors. Not even the dead are safe, with removed souls, corpses and
stolen magic being used to craft the elite core of death knights.

This
version of the horde is what became dominant in Cataclysm and Mists
of Pandaria, exemplified by the goblins joining and doing what they
did to Azshara. The orcs and undead also joined in on the fun,
shifting from mundane armies with iconic magic (shamans and
mind-control respectively) to armies that are heavily
technology-oriented. No longer is the orc an honorable warrior or a
monstrous brute. He is but a cog in the war machine.

3)
The Rebel Horde (Lord of the Clans, of Blood and Honor, Warcraft III
tutorial). This is a bit of a weird one, and I debated whether I
should include it at all. It didn't star prominently in any games,
and was more of a reaction to a short-term situation than an overall
theme. But the more I thought about it, the more it fit. Because
while the rebel horde existed only shortly in canon, it did have a
big impact on how people viewed the horde.

The
rebel horde was the horde formed during Lord of the Clans and
persisted until the orcs took off for Kalimdor. It was a time when
the orcs were trying to be honorable warriors, but still struggling
with the sins of their past. They wanted to be left alone and return
to their old culture, but they couldn't do so with their people still
in chains. It was a sympathetic struggle, though one could definitely
argue the morality of it.

This
version of the horde really struck a note with fans and producers. I
suspect it's because everybody loves the underdog, and the orcs were
definitely in that role. They were a small bunch of rebels, hiding in
the hills, trying to free their people, fighting against a massive
continents-spanning alliance that, while not actively malicious,
certainly didn't give a damn about the wants and needs of the orcs.
It was a great situation, and one that I wish the series had explored
a little more. I'd have loved it if the battlegrounds were actually
old battles from this era, with neither side in the right (“We're
freeing all orcs, no matter what horrid acts they committed!” “Each
and every orc should be held accountable for the actions of the
horde, regardless of what they themselves did!”), nor in the wrong
(“Our people are born in captivity and die in captivity. We cannot
abide the systematic repression of our people!” “These people
endangered our entire world. We cannot sit by and let them do this
again!”)

The
problem comes when trying to recapture this glory. You see, to
recapture this, you need to have the horde as persecuted underdogs.
And the other directions make this impossible. The Monster Horde can
be a persecuted underdog, but they're all evil, so it's not like that
makes them sympathetic. The War Machine Horde has more room for moral
individuals, but is by definition not an underdog. Finally, the
Settler Horde just wants to tend to their homeland. It's hard to make
them a persecuted party without turning the other side into very
obvious villains, which the writers (for very good reasons) weren't
willing to do.

And
to be fair, the official stance has never been one of the horde being
persecuted victims. But it does pop its ugly head on occasion, with
some isolated quests and developers. I've already mentionedaggresionitis
hominum in my look at the lost isles, but it pops up with other races
as well. The idea that the forsaken got their name because they were
forsaken by their former comrades is a common one as well, adding a
sense of persecution as a central theme, despite that being based on
absolutely nothing in canon

4)
The Settler Horde (Warcraft III). During Warcraft III, the orcs and
trolls traveled west to Kalimdor, finding lands left unclaimed (or at
least, left unclaimed by anyone we're supposed to care about). While
life still isn't easy, the members of the horde now finally have a
place to call their own. The horde is family, and together, they will
secure a future.

The
main purpose of the Settler Horde is to tame these new lands. From
the barren wastes of Durotar, to the grand plains of Mulgore, to the
monster-infested jungles of the Echo Isles, to the plagued wastes of
Tirisfal to the darkened woods of Quel'thalas. These lands are
hostile and deadly, but through the horde's strength, perseverance,
strong sense of personal identity and bond with the land, they shall
be tamed.

Now,
I personally prefer the settler version of the horde, both because I
just think it's an awesome concept, and because it's what the series
left off on in The Frozen Throne. However, while I would have
definitely disliked the series going back to the old rebel or war
machine hordes, I could probably get over it, as long as it was
well-executed.

Obviously,
that's not what happened. Instead, the horde of World of Warcraft
tries to be all four hordes at once, and fails utterly because the
four are utterly incompatible. “We will tame this land through our
connection to the natural world! Now go help the monstrous undead
create a horrid plague, while we try to claim a land that's easier to
tame!” “The alliance settlers on Kalimdor are threatening our way
of life! Quickly, start aiding the alliance settlers on Kalimdor!”
“The forsaken have a strong sense of individuality. That is why
they all uniformly chose to serve the same person” “We serve the
will of the elements. Now go help our newest members: people who
enslave the elements.”

And
mind you, that was all stuff from before Cataclysm, back when the
fact that the developers couldn't agree which direction to take with
the horde was still hidden in the background. It's only after we
started hearing the developers talk about Garrosh in such conflicted
ways that it became apparent that, no, the writers really weren't
going anywhere with all the contradictory stuff, like we'd assumed.
Say what you want about the horridness of the alliance becoming the
Wrynn Empire, but at least we knew what was going on most of the
time.

Races,
hordes and intersections

I
wish I had the time and the patience to go into the sheer amount of
contradicting, dropped and minimized story directions for the horde.
Once you start paying attention to that sort of stuff you'll quickly
become overwhelmed. Remember how much it was set up that the tauren
were going to the mentor figures for the horde? Or how important
individuality was for the forsaken? Or how the entire blood elf race
was traveling to outland? Or how the orcs were switching to a
theocratic society? Or how the jungle trolls...

...actually,
never mind about the jungle trolls. They never really had anything
approaching an actual direction, did they? I guess you could count
the whole “casting off eviler traditions” from the RPG and the
warcraft encyclopedia, but that was never really treated as an
ongoing process.

While
we're talking about specific races for a moment, let's address the
blood elves, because they're a very good example of multiple styles
of horde clashing. The blood elves had a long development process to
get them to fit into the horde. What did they become? Fel-crazed,
murderous anarchists, who will not only reject, but outright attack
any spiritual authority, will corrupt and exploit the land and have
three-quarters of their history retconned to make them have always
been completely evil of their own volition. Basically, they were
turned into perfect members of the war machine horde.

Luckily,
before TBC rolled around, someone actually seems to have realized
that they didn't get around to turning the rest of the horde into
monsters yet, so having this version of the blood elves be tolerated
in the horde would make as much sense as having the forsaken be
tolerated in the horde. And that would just be silly.

So,
the blood elves received a pretty major re-tool before the release of
TBC. Pretty much the entire RPG was thrown out the window, with the
history from TFT largely restored. Usage of fel magic was seriously
wound back, with most of the population not knowing of it and instead
relying on mundane sources of arcane magic. And the blood knights got
themselves a rather poorly executed redemption story, which was
coupled with the entire blood elf race now getting holy energy
pumping through their veins.

Which
becomes a problem again in Cataclysm, because the blood elves from
TBC have absolutely no business staying in Garrosh' horde. Like the
orcs and the tauren, the blood elves were set up to be primarily
concerned with their own homeland, which they have regained. The
scourge's hold on the region has been broken, the mana addiction
resolved, the internal politics cooled down and even Zul'aman has
been thoroughly weakened. The fact that the blood elves stayed with
the horde through WotLK is already questionable enough, but
supporting a war whose only purpose is to kill alliance and get the
orcs more wood? That makes no sense.

Neither
do any of the other internal politics of the horde. It's again
because of the different directions thing. The writers want the horde
to be several things at once, when those things are obviously
incompatible. To make it happen anyway, we need to completely ignore
several aspects of the setting. Orcish honor and different tauren
tribes? These things cannot be explained in a way that makes sense
when you haven't decided on a direction for the horde.

Which
is why I was so surprised when they were.

A
happy beginning... I hope.

To
my utter and eternal amazement, after Cataclysm had driven me away
from the franchise, I was pulled back in. I'm not going to act like
Mists of Pandaria was a flawless expansion, because it wasn't. But it
was the first expansion where it really felt the writing was pulling
together to at least make for a cohesive experience. I know some
people are going to vehemently disagree with me, but for me, MoP was
the first expansion that truly felt like it belonged as a sequel to
warcraft II and III. It wasn't an amazing sequel or anything, but it
actually managed to tap into what made warcraft warcraft.

And
yes, this is also true for the portrayal of the factions. The horde
finally settles into a single role, that of the War Machine, though
with enough elements of the Settler Horde shining through (and
eventually, taking over) that I wouldn't call it derailment. The orcs
of Garrosh' horde, no matter what else you may say of them, do have a
sense of honor. Nazgrim, who the player hangs out with for most of
the expansion, is the most obvious. However, even the obvious villain
orcs, like Malkorok and Ishi, are shown to be driven by honor. I
don't agree with all aspects of the portrayal of orcs, but it at
least felt like these things could be happening in the same,
consistent universe as earlier events.

The
same goes for the other races of the horde. The tauren actually start
acting like their own nation, with its own interests to uphold. Dezco
is in Pandaria for his own mission, and Baine is not just going to
blindly follow Garrosh. Speaking of Dezco, we finally get some
acknowledgment of tribal identities through the dawnchaser tribe and
the tribe-specific units seen in the TCG. The trolls, for the first
time, get some actual direction for their race, as laid out in
'shadows of the horde', and are also finally allowed to react to
Garrosh' actions in a rational way. The goblins finally get a
consistent feel for their level of technology, rather than wildly
fluctuating between useless and deus ex machina, as it did
previously. Blood elves get a good show on the isle of thunder and in
the siege of Orgrimmar, finally giving the non-magister parts of
their race an opportunity to show their worth.

The
alliance doesn't quite get the same degree of improvement the horde
did. 5.0 was spent trying once again to turn the alliance into the
story of the Wrynn's, to the point where the main reason for the
alliance being in Pandaria is getting back Anduin. However, the
further the expansion progressed, the more they actually seemed to
realize what the alliance is supposed to be. The various nations
actually start acting like independent entities, pursuing their own
interests with their own forces. Dalaran and Ironforge get stories
about their own internal politics, while unnamed night elf nation has
its own campaigns on Pandaria and gets some acknowledgment of the
internal developments that were skipped over almost entirely in
Cataclysm.

When
the forces do work together, it's no longer at the cost of their
identity either, as you can see in 5.1 and 5.4. The alliance forces
are no longer the homogenous masses seen at Wintergarde, Highbank and
the SI:7 team. Instead, every nation brings its own specialties to
the field, strengthening the whole and looking damn spiffy while
they're at it. Unless they're worgen or pandaren.

Regardless,
it's a big improvement on both sides of the coin. Warlords of
Draenor, at least the parts of it that we've been shown, seems to
continue the trend in a big way. You can count me among those that
are once again excited about the future of the franchise.

That
doesn't mean I'll stop snarking it though. See you all next time.

1 comment:

Yeah, sure, a new beginning if you just forget everything that happened. I may have been happy to have gone along with that even if we didn't have another expansion dedicated to burying us up to our arm pits in Horde grease.

I want to destroy the Horde in every way. Politically, spiritually, and nationally. Hanging out the "Iron Horde" as a straw-man for me to beat on will not be full-filling. It's actually patronizing, especially when after all is said done odds are that the "Settler Horde" will be vindicated with all their old patron saints redeemed instead of being revealed for the monsters they are.

You really think that after all the white washing and hero worship Grom and Ogrim have gotten for the last decade that their WoD counterparts will actually prove undeserving of it? If so, I got a bridge I want to sell to you.

And no, the Alliance will not get story in WoD. It'll be a redux of TBC. They'll be introduced in a couple zones and forgotten until the Draenei show up to absolve the Horde of their sins. This is supported by the devs claiming that the Draenei are "very forgiving". They have in fact already forgiven the Horde.

Even something like a grudge, having harsh words against the Horde for what they've done is completely outside the realm of possibility. The Horde doesn't have to say they're sorry. They don't need to defend themselves. They don't need to repent. The Alliance just forgives and forgets while the Horde just goes on it's merry way, indifferent to what they've done.

Just like how Jaina basically became best buds with the Horde simply because Medivh told her to.